Most N.C. high-hazard dams don't have emergency plans

Emergency action plans were required by 2014 law, but most state-regulated dams that are supposed to have one in place do not

By Adam Wagner StarNews Staff

SHALLOTTE -- When he drives to his Brunswick County home, Bob Fraser doesn't think about the ponds sitting just off U.S. 17 unless the windows are down.

"I think of those as a cesspool because they stink now," said Fraser, who has owned a Bay Village Street home in Shallotte since 2005.

While Fraser and other residents might think of the hills because of the odor coming from behind them the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality considers them dams, classifying them as high-hazard potential structures. Fraser was surprised this week to learn of the classification.

"If both those ponds broke at the same time," he said, "water would run down the side of the road. It would never cover the road. The only downfall to any of this is if those dams did breach, there's no (other) way to get in and out of the neighborhood."

To help local and state official save lives in the event of a breach, the N.C. General Assembly included a provision in the Coal Ash Management Act of 2014 requiring some dam owners to file emergency actions plans (EAPs) with the state. The plans use modeling software to help decision makers understand where water will flow should the dam breach and when to warn or evacuate homeowners who, like Fraser, often don't know a dam is nearby.

Now, more than a year after those plans were required to be in place, 1,309 of the 2,011 dams that are supposed to have them don't. Only dams defined as high-hazard or intermediate-hazard potential -- designations based on the threat and property should the dam fail -- are required to have completed documents.

In counties east of or contiguous to Interstate 95, 160 of the 217 dams supposed to have an EAP do not. The 73.7 percent lacking plans in eastern North Carolina is slightly outpacing the state's 60.6 percent.

In Brunswick County, one in five dams that is supposed to have an EAP does; in Lenoir County, it's one in seven. Hog processing plants in Duplin County, small landowners and local governments are all among the owners who have not completed an EAP.

"The requirement for all of these plans is relatively new, so we've been working through this list of thousands of dams and the EAPS have been coming in, but at this point no one is coming in with any kind of enforcement," said Bridget Munger, a spokeswoman for the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality, which houses the Dam Safety Program.

A high-hazard potential dam is defined by North Carolina as one that, in the event of a breach, would cause the probable loss of at least one life, lead to at least $200,000 of economic damage, and re-route more than 250 vehicles daily. Should an intermediate-hazard dam fail, models indicate it would cause between $30,000 and $200,000 of damage and result in the interruption of service for between 25 and 250 vehicles per day.

While dam safety has been thrust into the national spotlight by recent damage to the 770-foot Oroville Dam in California, state-monitored dams in eastern N.C. tend to be much smaller and belong to private entities.

In the eastern part of the state, the tallest state-monitored dam is 47 feet and the lowest is 5 feet. There are 627 dams in the area and 409 of them are categorized as low-potential hazard, meaning they would cause less than $30,000 in damage in the event of a breach.

'A mindset shift'

Shane Cook, the N.C. state dam safety engineer, said most who live near a North Carolina dam don't need to be concerned about a failure.

"If you've got dams sitting there since 1792, they've never failed and they've seen a lot of storm events," Cook said. "It all depends on how well it's been maintained and how well it's been designed. If your slope is flat and it's been mowed and maintained, I don't think I'd worry about it."

Still, the EAPs have caused consternation among some who have had dams on their land for decades without incident. Cook said his department regularly receives calls from elderly people who are either living on a fixed income or can't understand the technology needed to put together a plan. A finalized EAP typically costs at least $1,000 and can cost as much as $25,000, depending on the structure's size.

"It's just a mindset shift," Munger said, "that you have this new layer of regulatory requirements that you didn't even know existed, that you're expected to comply with and that have the potential to be extraordinarily expensive."

In an effort to ease the process, the state has been working on a computer program that lays small-scale inundation data over parcel data. They've also created an online portal that walks applicant through the process of submitting a plan -- think Turbo Tax, but for dams.

"It's one thing to have a law, but it's another thing to help the people comply with the law that can't afford to do it," said Shane Cook, North Carolina's state dam safety engineer.

'They improved considerably'

Requiring the EAP has helped the state improve on national dam safety ranking, according to the Association of State Dam Safety Officials. Since 1998, North Carolina has risen from meeting 65 percent of the organization's safety benchmarks to 81 percent, slightly outpacing the national average which has risen from 66 percent to 79 percent of the benchmarks during the same period.

"They improved considerably given that change of how they do things," Mark Ogden, a technical specialist with the Association of State Dam Safety Officials, said about the plans.

Ogden also said North Carolina's roughly 16 full-time employees dedicated to dam safety rank well nationally. Those employees are the ones inspecting dams, doing permit reviews and reviewing breach construction and other repair plans.

In North Carolina, a dam inspection is free. It typically involves a staff member who is already somewhat familiar with a structure visiting it and conducting a visual inspection.

"You're looking for obvious things," Cook said. "You walk out on the structure. You looking for, 'Are there trees on it?' 'Are there really, really heavy shrubs, bushes,' things like that -- that maintenance-wise could lead to deterioration of the structure long-term. You're also looking for any kind of animals burrows, muskrat holes, things like that. You're looking cracks in the structure, erosion on the dam."

State inspectors are mandated to check high-hazard potential dams every two years, but try to inspect them every year. Intermediate-potential dams must be inspected every five years.

In the two weeks following Hurricane Matthew, Munger said, state inspectors performed more than 400 inspections -- and that came after they baby sat some structures for three weeks straight, watching closely for signs of failure.

'We haven't had to use it yet'

Boiling Spring Lakes is the only entity in Brunswick County that has complied with the state regulation, filing its EAP shortly after the state requirement was enacted.

Jeff Repp, the town's manager, said the process took about nine months to complete and cost the town between $25,000 and $30,000. The plan was not necessary during Hurricane Matthew because the town had drawn the water down behind the dam by 2 feet before the storm reached the area.

"We have one," Repp said of the plan, "but we haven't had to use it yet, thank God."

Emergency management officials on the eastern part of the state are split on the usefulness of the plans for the smaller, more common dams.

"It does give us an aspect of what to expect if there's a failure, what to expect downstream, of what areas we might have to evacuate, what type of situations -- rainfall events -- might get us in that," said Scott Garner, the deputy director of Brunswick County's emergency services department.

During recent storms, Garner said, a dam at Boiling Spring Lakes has had some mild erosion. He also said a small dam that formed a road into the Sunset Lakes neighborhood in Sunset Beach was severely damaged during Matthew.

Roger Dail, the Lenoir County director of emergency services who has overseen operations during both Floyd and Matthew, said plans are more useful for larger dams such as the Army Corps of Engineers-controlled Falls Lake Dam.

"We know they're there and we know they have the capability of breaching," Dail said of the smaller dams, "so the approach is, there's nothing we can do about it. Once they breach, we're notified immediately."

The Tull Lake Dam, an 8-foot earthen structure in southern Lenoir County, breached during Floyd, was repaired and breached again during Matthew. During the 2016 storm, Dail said, it did not result in worse flooding downstream, but did keep water levels high for slightly longer than they would have been otherwise.

Defined by the state as having high-hazard potential and now breached twice in two storms, Tull Lake Dam does not have an emergency action plan.

Reporter Adam Wagner can be reached at 910-343-2389 or Adam.Wagner@StarNewsOnline.com.